ANNANDALE, Va. — On Friday, June 20, 2014, a special PTO Meeting for paid PTO members will take place at Mason Crest Elementary at 8:15 am to vote on the proposed revised PTO Bylaws.

As we discussed at the PTO meeting on May 15, Elizabeth Bille and Tim Sample reviewed our bylaws and made proposed changes. The goal in revising these bylaws was four-fold

(a) to streamline them, remove redundant language, and strike content that was not applicable to our PTO (but was a holdover from a PTA template we had received during our organization’s infancy for example);

(b) to take out extraneous sections that do not need to be contained in an organization’s bylaws (for example, auditing procedures–that are better served in a standalone policy document, which we have created);

(c) to build upon our learnings from our first couple of years as an organization, revising time frames where we noted we needed more flexibility or where we wanted our calendar to better correspond with the school calendar; codifying that many roles can be shared by two or more people, etc.; and

(d) creating a bit more role clarity between the Board members and committees.  Currently, the elected Board positions and non-elected committee positions have quite a bit of overlap, which can lead to confusion.  Thus, we are proposing that the elected Board positions will be primarily responsible for setting the strategy and goals of the organization, and for coordinating the work of any committees that logically related to/flow up to that Board position; and then the committees, working with the Board member, would execute upon those goals/strategy/activities.

Copies of the current and proposed revised bylaws are available for review .

Paid members who cannot attend in person may assign another paid member to vote in proxy by completing the Special Meeting Proxy Form.

Questions can be directed to Rock Rockenbach, PTO President, at Rockenbach@aol.com.